It's strange, but I feel I have to justify myself whenever I choose to watch an NHK Taiga drama. To watch any one of these dramas requires a 45 - 50 episode commitment, sometimes over a whole year, if you are to watch one on a weekly basis. For the same amount of time and effort, I could have watched anywhere from five to ten different dramas. I like to spread my net wide when choosing which dramas to watch, so by choosing to watch a Taiga drama, I have made a conscious decision to limit my scope for understanding contemporary culture. Is that really to my loss, though?
Every so often I have listened to outside voices tell me that Taiga drama isn't especially good. That it is in fact uncool, slow, takes up too much of one's time for so little reward. But it doesn't take long for me to discover that those making the argument have no interest in studying history in the first place. They don't have to go so far as to say "I hate reading history"; I can tell that by the way they make their argument. For those who have studied history and have no time for it, well, who can argue with that.
Two of the biggest complaints made against Taiga drama, as a subset of Drama World, is that as drama they are too long and as story too antiquated. That is another way of saying the stories have nothing to do with our lives. Why spend the time watching a Taiga that teaches us about the past when we can never learn enough about our own world? Even I ask that question of myself, and as someone who loves to read history. I look at my viewing options for the week and see that I have yet to become a completist for dramas that feature Suzuki Kyoka, Koizumi Kyoko, Oguri Shun, Nakai Kiichi, Sato Koichi, Kinami Haruka, Mizukawa Asami, Yanagiba Toshiro, Koji Yakusho, or any number of talents that greatly fascinate me. I can never learn enough about the power dynamics among government and corporate agencies, or about ethics and ambition as it plays out within the highly unique structure of the Japanese workplace. I am not so old that I cannot be moved by love stories that feature the young. Anything having to do with the Japanese youth of today, teach me about it. And so, anytime I choose to watch a Taiga over these kinds of stories, I feel I am cutting myself off from a wealth of knowledge regarding the beauty of contemporary Japan.
The question, then, about whether watching a Taiga drama is worth one's time and effort is really a question about how important we think it is to understand and appreciate the past. I could probably read 5 - 10 good novels in the amount of time it would take me to read Tolstoy's War and Peace, but I wouldn't do that, because I haven't read War and Peace to the end yet (nor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, come to think of it), but whenever I have dipped into it, I can sense right away that I am reading something that has endured for a very good reason. And not because it is a story that is safely tucked away in the past, of no consequence for today. I do read the novels of today, but quickly come to regret it. No single Taiga drama may be on the level of a Tolstoy or a Dostoevsky. The Tale of Genji will continue to outlast anything produced on television today, even an excellent drama like this year's Taiga drama HIKARU KIMI E that is based on its author's world. But that a Taiga might fade away almost as soon as it is produced doesn't matter to me. I feel that I am being taught about an important phase of Japanese history, and in a way that the history books rarely manage to do, especially the ones written in English, because few historians of any nationality can write dramatically, and in my experience even fewer can write with style.
Whenever I pick up a work of literature I am looking for a book that I can read again and again, for the enjoyment, for the appreciation of life, but mainly to help answer the question for me of what is great literature really about? I don't have that same expectation for any single Taiga drama. My feeling is that Japanese culture itself is already a masterpiece, so that whenever I pick up a Taiga drama, I am reading a chapter—hopefully an unforgettable one—from that incomparable book.
I have heard most of the complaints and critiques made against Taiga drama. Its plotting and pacing is out of touch with 21st century forms of reading and writing narrative, says one. Its television ratings aren't what they used to be, a sign of decline, says another. Those days of the past were very mean to women, comes a third (those days weren't kind to anyone, that's why the term "feudal" has become synonymous with an unenviable past). Betrayal, deceit, injustice, ritual suicide, war between the clans rules its content, all of which is very dark material to have to watch when sitting down to relax at the end of the day (whoever makes this argument though isn't paying attention to what's been happening around the world these past one hundred years—looked at statistically, humanity has never been more murderous and cruel to one another, with poverty and famine still the norm). None of these kinds of arguments make for a good case against watching Taiga dramas because these have little to nothing to say about whether studying history is worth one's time, which is what the writing and watching of Taiga is really about.
The best critique made against Taiga is that it tends to recycle stories from the same periods of history: the late 12th century when Taira no Kiyomori broke the back of Heian culture and the Minamoto and Hojo clans created the Kamakura shogunate; the warring period of the 16th century, culminating in the consolidation of power by Tokugawa Ieyasu; the revolution that occurred in the 1850s and 1860s that helped industrialize and modernize Japan. This is no small complaint; I have made it myself. I have excused this practice by saying it's always welcome to hear the same story told from many different perspectives. Modern life seems to be at war with this very idea, so the practice ought to be an admired one from all those of us who wish to gain knowledge democratically (to seek to understand the past with a many-faceted approach). Still, Japan has had a long and fascinating history. Why has so much of it been shut out? Where are the stories from the Nara period? Why nothing about the Onin War?
I think NHK has heard everyone's complaint and has made the adjustment. I thought we were never going to get a drama that featured the world of Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon. But here we are in 2024, and HIKARU KIMI E is off to a great start. Next year, the artists and publishers who created the world of Ukiyo-e. Will these stories be as sublime, as full of grandeur as the battle for the soul of Japan, which is what all these dramas focused on the warring periods have for its stakes? Yes, of course they will. An artist recreates the same religious conflict within him or herself, and without having to spill all that blood. It looks like NHK has already gotten Murasaki right (or at least has already honored her spirit as a serious, unrivaled artist). I don't doubt next year's drama will be a success too.
To date, I have only completed watching nine Taiga dramas. That may sound like a lot, but my great interest in contemporary Japan has prevented me from watching more. I regret that. But then again, whenever I come back to a Taiga drama I wonder why I had stayed away from them for so long.
As of late, what has most impressed me about Taiga drama, especially after having finished watching KAMAKURA DONO NO 13-NIN last fall and then compared it with the history books, is to discover the way the writers have handled their material. On the one hand, their work is easily done. Since the stories are based on people who have actually lived, all that the writers need to do is dramatize the facts that the historians have laid out for us in a rather dry, academic way. On the other hand, some of these historical figures have almost no factual background at all, so the writers' work is largely imaginative. We ought to treat their fictions skeptically for that reason.
There are too many examples from the movies to cite where writers cheat history just in order to draw an audience. The one that comes immediately to mind is Mel Gibson's Braveheart. The movie was so powerful and moving that it ended up instilling national pride for Scotland it didn't even know it had. But William Wallace was never real, only a set of myths. Gibson and his writers took those myths, and rather than try and reconstruct a real Wallace based on what we know of the time, they created a new myth for the modern age, and one based on suspect motives (including Gibson's strange, obsessive hatred for Britain). A highly entertaining, inspiring movie but one not even based on an interpretation of the historical record.
I don't see anything like that happening within the world of Taiga drama. Part of the reason for that is that the profit motive for NHK is nothing compared to that of a Hollywood production. It also doesn't have the conceit of a Ridley Scott who felt he could portray the immense complexity of a life like Napoleon's in a two hour movie. Reportedly Scott's budget for producing his movie settled on a number anywhere between $130 and $200 million. What other director in the future will be able to amass that amount of money so that he might be able to compete with Scott in portraying the life of Napoleon on a monumental scale? A French historian I respect, of a kind who Scott expressed contempt for, noted that Scott's inventions about Napoleon were far removed from the historical record. In other words, Scott was using Napoleon, not to teach us history, but to use him in order to express the kind of values we need to hear today. At that scale, and made under the obnoxious premise that a life of that size can be portrayed in a few hours, it is highly unlikely that anyone will be able to challenge Scott's picture anytime soon.
Where the myths of old might have been transformed into the myths for today, as seen through Taiga drama, the portrayal of the 12th century warrior Yoshitsune stands out. A heroic, admired figure across the centuries, he is very much like William Wallace in that history has left almost no trace of his life; the man lives on primarily through legend. But unlike Hollywood budgets that crowd out all competing narratives for spectacle and bloat like Scott's, though Yoshitsune was treated to a Taiga drama all his own in 2003, the character has reappeared through drama any number of times since then. No single picture emerges of Yoshitsune except through a composite of these interpretations. That's how it ought to be done, and that's how Taiga excels at getting it done, for no great individual deserves a single biography, and no director should ever be arrogant enough to assume that his biography of the great ought to prevail over the rest.
A good example of how history can be invented successfully is seen in this year's Taiga drama HIKARU KIMI E. Like Wallace or Yoshitsune, we have virtually no historical record of Murasaki Shikibu's mother. In her diary, Murasaki mentions her father, her brother too. But not a word about her mother. Why not? What happened to her? Did she die young? How? Was there a rift between mother and daughter that made the daughter not want to write about the mother? Those are the kinds of questions a writer will have to ask herself if she is going to use fiction to recreate a person who actually lived. With little historical material to work with, the way the drama's writer Oishi Shizuka has chosen to recreate Murasaki's mother is nothing short of remarkable. In fact, she was written in a way meant to shock. It was the talk of all Japanese YouTubers last month who are commenting on the drama from week to week. Not because it was poorly done, but because Oishi's set of choices in recreating the mother was bold and provocative. How the mother was portrayed, what happened to her in the drama, could easily be seen as a cheap ploy, but the more I have thought about it, the more Oishi's invention works. No one will ever know what Murasaki's mother was like. No one can claim to know what happened to her. But we do need an explanation for why Murasaki herself turned out the way she did, as a writer of rare genius, for why her psychology was the way it was. I have found Oishi's explanation (so far) to be as good as anyone else's on these matters. (More on that later.)
It has been almost two months since HIKARU KIMI E started its year-long run. Within that time, I have already learned more about Murasaki than I have from reading all the books available to us in English. It hasn't been for lack of imagination on the part of the historians and novelists that have kept her largely invisible to me. It's that no book is capable of showing us the flesh of history the way Taiga does every year. For that reason, I feel that Taiga drama, as an art form, holds a unique place in Japanese culture. Without it, I wouldn't be able to picture Murasaki as a woman first before she ever became an artist. Now that I can do that, I am even more grateful to Taiga drama than I have ever been before.
[Photograph: 小栗旬 Oguri Shun, playing Hōjō Yoshitoki. From Episode 18 of the 2022 Taiga drama 鎌倉殿の１３人 Kamakura-dono no 13 nin]